THAT IS WHAT THEY LIKE TO HEAR (2018)

This body of work examines conflicting ideas of history, contemporary events and how these construct certain ideologies. The work questions whether new interpretations can hold the potential for agency and change.​In Israeli culture, heads and tails are called “Etz" and “Pali” originating from the Mil coin that has on one side an engraving of a tree (Etz in hebrew) and on the other, the word Palestine (Pali short for Palestine). The Mil coin was the currency of the British Mandate of Palestine from 1927 until May 1948. The coin was designed by Austen St. Barbe Harrison, a British architect that had designed the first Palestine Archaeological museum which is still active. The name of the work That is what they Like to hear is derived from a greek inscription in the Archeology museum. Harrison chose this phrase because it contains the first-ever use of the Greek word archaiologia, or the study of antiquity.

​Diminishing Returns, Single channel video, 09:13 min, 2018

The video work Diminishing Returns reenacts Tom Stoppard's opening scene from the play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, featuring two minor characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet. By transcending the Hamlet script, Stoppard opens the characters to new interpretations and potentials. This gesture is continued by introducing a narrative around the Mil coin. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are betting on coin flips. Ros, who bets heads each time, wins more than eighty flips in a row. The extreme unlikeliness of this event suggests that the two have entered an alternate universe, where reality and illusion intermix and mirrors the inability of all mankind to understand those forces ultimately in control of their lives. At the same time this occurrence asserts that such forces do exist. Diminishing Returns was shot in Khirbet Qeiyafa, an archaeological site of an ancient fortress city that was uncovered in 2007. This discovery had significant implications for a heated and prolonged dispute between two archaeological approaches - The ‘Biblical Minimalism’ and ‘Biblical Maximalism’. The labels ‘Maximalism’ and ‘Minimalism’ were coined in the debate about the historical reliability of the Bible. Maximalist scholars assume that the Bible is to be taken as a historical source unless proven otherwise, and furthermore, that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; minimalists assume that the Bible cannot be considered reliable evidence and must be read as fiction, unless it can be confirmed archaeologically. The excavation of Khirbet Qeiyafa was led by Biblical Archaeologists that believes they have uncovered the fortress city of King David

​That is what they like to hear, 40x30 cm, Inkjet print on backlit film, 2018. ​That is what they like to hear, 30x40 cm, Inkjet print on backlit film, 2018.

The collages combine both archives – Austen St. Barbe Harrison’s and the findings from Khirbet Qeiyafa – into a third narrative. A narrative that examines the evolution of land possession and its conflicts, and the contemporary experience of engagement with digital archives.

The objects originated from the display cabinets at the Archaeology museum. The cabinets are deconstructed and later reconstructed as if they were archeological findings. As reconstructed objects, they transcend their original purpose and become an architectural model.